A series of papers (I-III) reports spectroscopic investigation on structure and dynamics of 9(10H)-acridone (AD) and its hydrated clusters. As the first part of the series, the present paper describes their lowest (1)(pi,pi*) electronic transition in the 370-400 nm region studied by fluorescence-based laser spectroscopy and mass-selective two-color resonance-enhanced two-photon ionization (2C-R2PI). Thirteen fluorescent hydrates as well as the monomer have been identified in fluorescence-excitation and UV-UV hole-burning measurements, and size assignments for relatively smaller clusters, AD-(H2O), (n = 1-6), have been conducted by 2C-R2PI. The origin bands for larger-size clusters show larger red shifts converging at ca. 2200 cm(-1) but the changes are nonmonotonic, with a substantial increase from n = 2 to 3. Density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations at the B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level have predicted that the energy difference between the C=O and N-H bonded isomers is quite small (only approximate to 1 kcal/mol) for n = 1 and 2. The observed spectral shifts of fluorescent hydrates with n = 1 and 2 are well reproduced by the HOMO-LUMO gap in the DFT orbital energies of either of the N-H or C=O bonded isomers, leaving the definitive structural assignments to fluorescence-detected infrared spectroscopy which will be described in paper II. For the larger clusters (n 3-5), several minimum-energy structures have been identified within 2 kcal/mol in binding energy, among which the conformers with water molecules bridging between the C=O and N-H sites over the AD's aromatic rings are identified as the observed species, based on good agreement between the calculated and observed spectral shifts.